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In Audi-speak Avant means Estate, which means Wagon, which means hauler. Today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe Audi S4 will haul both your stuff and ass, but does its price make it worth hauling out your check book?

Yesterday’s silly snack food themed 1994 Chevy Caprice may have left you hungering, seeing as it was infused with delicious Cheeto-y goodness. It may also have left you with pangs of a different sort, those that come with a car perhaps lacking in taste.

Cheetos are like cheesy and delicious little angel turds presented in a mylar bag. Today’s Nice…
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That sort of yen can only be satisfied by a correspondingly low price, which 86% of you felt yesterday’s Chevy also lacked, meaning that it is unlikely anyone will be getting Frito-Lay’d in it any time soon.

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From cheesy orange to Imola yellow, today’s 2004 Audi S4 Avant stands in stark contrast to yesterday’s Chevy. First off, it’s relatively stock, and secondly it’s a freaking V8-six speed AWD wagon. Secondarily, it also a pure expression of serious German engineering, and not a clown car.

The first S4 - the Ur-S4 to you and me - was a derivation of the mid-sized (then Audi’s largest) C platform, and nominally replaced the outgoing 200 turbo model. Shuffle ahead a few years and the S4 honorific has moved down a notch, and up in performance potential.

Early A4 versions of the S4 model were powered by a rabid twin-turbo 2.7-litre V6, while the B6 - like today’s car - shunned both the sextet and being blown by having a naturally aspirated 4.2-litre V8 hanging out over its front axle line. In this Imola yellow job that’s backed up by a Getrag six-speed manual, and of course Audi’s renowned all-wheel drive system.

Power from the modestly sized eight was a factory claimed 340-bhp, and it also packed a lag-free application of 302 lb-ft of twist. Reining in all that hairy chested power is s set of massive ventilated discs - 13.58-inch front/11.81-inch in back, and those are wrapped in Avus III six-spoke wheels.

Audi is not just known for their venerable Quattro drivetrains but also for having some of the nicest and best designed interiors on the planet. This 80K mile Avant is no exception, and it looks to have held up pretty damn well well.

The car has almost every convenience and luxury feature you could want short of a bidet, and the ad does not mention any faults in any of that fancy pants equipment. The exterior too seems flaw-free and looking just as mean-ass cool as it did the day it left Ingolstadt.

In fact the only real issue here - the fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench as it were - is the admission that the car has been dropped. The seller does note that the camber has been adjusted so that it doesn’t look as balls-deep dumb as those stanced cars but still, it’s been messed with.

Look, unless your name is something like Hans Arschgeige and you’ve got one of those Audi Factory Certified Suspension Technician tramp stamps above your ass crack, you shouldn’t ever monkey with an S4’s springy bits. I may be going out on a limb here, but I think the factory yabbos have a better sense of how to make these things work the best.

That of course may just be a drop in the bucket compared to this Avant’s aksing price. The ebay ad has a Buy It Now set at $16,500, and now it’s up to you to say whether or not seller should get that. What do you say, is this Imola Avant worth that kind of scratch? Or, is this highway hauler priced not to move?